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Published: October 13th 2006
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Fortesque Falls - Karajini National Park
This was at Dales Gorge and is more picturesque than this photo shows After doing some much needed washing, stocking up on groceries etc we gladly left Port Hedland and headed south on a side trip to Point Samson and Karratha. This was 204km from Port Hedland but we decided to do it as a side trip, returning to near Port Hedland for the drive inland to Karajini National Park and Tom Price. It was going to be easier to get to Exmouth via Tom Price, which will cut out this part of the coast.
Anyway, off we go to Point Samson which is a fairly modern but sleepy little fishing village with another grotesque iron ore loading facility nearby. The dust from this rust coloured ore turns the water a dull copper green patina and is disappointing after turquoise blue water. We had allowed 3 nights here, but only stayed for two.
It seems that what this place is most notorious for is sandflies, and rightly so - there was a plague while we were here. There are toxic chemical concoctions (almost nuclear I’m sure) available for these and other bitey insects, but I heard about a mixture that you can make with a few natural ingredients, so I made it
Spider Walk - Karajini National Park
You can see a kid in the middle of the photo straddling the water. and except for a couple of bites it kept them at bay, not to mention that it smells much better. It seems that the toxic sprays didn’t do so good, because a few days later we saw a couple who were covered in bites from Pt Samson and they used a spray!
There was not much to do in Point Samson. We went for a drive to nearby Karratha, Dampier and the Burrup Peninsula where there is a massive natural gas plant, and another drive to Cossack, which is a historic port town, but to be honest, we have seen more picturesque places. The highlight of the area is supposedly Honeymoon beach - see photo and make up your own mind.
We left for the drive (470km) to Karajini National Park via Port Hedland the next morning. It was a hot day of 39 - too hot to keep going so we stayed at a free roadside camp for the night (26/9) and arrived at the Karajini Campground the next morning. This is the first National Park for a while that is accessible to non-4WD caravans so we didn’t have to pitch the tent, but there were no
Decending a ladder - Karajini National Park
This guy had the right idea. See the 6pack slung over his shoulder!! showers or water and only bush toilets - we used our on board facilities. After setting up, we drove about ½ hour to Weano Gorge and did the very challenging walks to Junction pool and Handrail Pool. These walks, which took about 3 hours in total varied from climbing down steep ladders, to edging along rock ledges, to wading chest deep through very narrow cold river gorges, to climbing up through a small fast flowing waterfall by rope. But they were worth it and quite spectacular. One walk - the Spider Walk means that you can either wade through the water or straddle it as per the photo. Unfortunatley, we couldn't get photos of the more spectacular spots on these walks because we had to leave the camera halfway due to having to wade in the deeper water. Some of the gorge walls were 50ft high and only about 3ft across in some spots. The next day we walked from the campground to Dales Gorge and did the walks to Circular Pool, Fortescue Falls and the very pretty Fern Pool where we had a lovely swim. Again about 3 hours return.
After all that walking we had worked up
Dump truck - Tom Price
One tyre on these trucks costs $100,000. big thirsts and so cocktail hour on both days involved copious quantities of amber liquid and even a couple of G&T’s. Not sure what we ate for dinner on these nights??!!
Waking a little worse for wear, we only had a short 107km drive (thank goodness) to the mining town of Tom Price. This town was established by the mining company in the 60’s specifically for mine workers at the nearby open cut mine and is a nice little oasis of neat houses, green parks and lawns in the middle of a dry and barren red landscape. The town has since been cut loose from the mining company and has its own council now. We made it in time to go on the open cut mine tour which was really interesting. I grew up knowing this place as Mt Tom Price, but they have mined the ‘Mount’ down to a height where it is no longer a mountain and so now its just Tom Price. This is very sad somehow, the country is very scarred. There is big money to be made on the mines, which makes it very hard for small businesses in the towns to compete with
wages that the mines pay. And get this - the mining companies prefer WOMEN to drive the big dump trucks because MEN are too hard on the equipment!!!! HA!
We had a big day of travel the next day as we were going to drive all the way from here to Exmouth - 656km at 85kph. We couldn’t have picked a worse day for travel. We left at 8.00 am and by about 10.00 there was a hot wind and the temperature got to 51 degrees inside the car at one stage - 41 degrees outside. We arrived in Exmouth at 5.00 after a couple of stops and found our friends Renée and Mason (from Barn Hill) were at the same caravan park so despite being hot and buggered we cooked up a BBQ together because they were leaving the next day. It was great to catch up with them again.
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Dom
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On a promise
Honey moon island... the highlight!! make up my own mind!!? Oh yeah Wes sound like you were on a promise and the boys got a work out, I recon it was all the big machines, Oh and the miners out fit that did it for sure... you cant beat roll play!!!!! I could say more about going DOWN the Shaft amd getting in the open cut etc but im not sure who reads this stuff All the Best Dom